THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN
It is my purpose, in the concluding chapters of this volume, to review
as fully and dispassionately as I can the series of military operations
known collectively as "the Santiago campaign," including, first, the
organization and equipment of the expedition of General Shafter at
Tampa; second, the disembarkation of troops and the landing of supplies
at Daiquiri and Siboney; third, the strategic plan of the campaign and
its execution; and, fourth, the wrecking of the army by disease after
the decisive battle of July 1-2. The point of view from which I shall
regard this campaign is not that of a trained military expert or critic,
but merely that of an attentive and fair-minded civilian observer. I do
not pretend to speak _ex cathedra_, nor do I claim for my judgments any
other value than that given to them by such inherent reasonableness and
fairness as they may seem to have. I went to Cuba without any prejudice
for or against any particular plan of operations; I had very little
acquaintance with or knowledge of the officers of the Fifth Army-Corps;
and the opinions and conclusions that I shall here set forth are based
on personal observations made in the field without conscious bias or
prepossession of any kind.
In reviewing a military campaign, an arctic expedition, a voyage of
discovery, or any other enterprise involving the employment of a
certain force for the accomplishment of a certain purpose, the first
question to be considered is the question of responsibility. Who is to
be held accountable for the management and the results of this
enterprise--the leader who directed and had charge of it, or the
superior power which gave him his orders, furnished him with his
equipment, and sent him into the field? When General Shafter was ordered
to "go and capture the garrison at Santiago and assist in capturing the
harbor and the fleet," did he become personally responsible for the
management and the results of the campaign, or did he share that
responsibility with the War Department? Unless there is some evidence to
the contrary, the presumption in such a case is that the general in
command of the army is told in due time where he is to go and what he is
expected to do, and is then allowed to make his own plan of campaign,
and to call upon the War Department for such supplies and means of
transportation as, in the exercise of his individual judgment, he may
think necessary for the successful execution of that plan. If he is
given time enough to acquaint himself thoroughly with the field in which
he is to operate, if his plan of campaign, in its general outlines, is
approved, and if all his requisitions for vessels, horses, mules,
wagons, ambulances, tents, guns, ammunition, and miscellaneous supplies
are duly honored, there is no reason that I can see why he should not be
held to a strict personal accountability for results, both generally and
in detail. He has made his own plan; he has had everything that he asked
for; and if the campaign does not go as it should, he, and not the War
Department, is to blame. If, however, the department, after selecting
him and approving his plan, does _not_ furnish him with the
transportation and the stores that he needs and has called for, he ought
to protect himself and his own reputation by referring respectfully to
that fact in his report of the campaign, so that, if any of his bricks
are imperfect for lack of straw, the people may know that he was not
supplied with straw and had no means whatever of getting it in the field
to which he was sent. The importance of this point will become apparent
when an attempt is made to ascertain the causes and fix the
responsibility for the wrecking of the Fifth Army-Corps by disease in
the short space of one calendar month.
There is nothing in the official documents thus far published to
indicate that General Shafter was unreasonably hurried, or that he
failed to get from the War Department anything for which he made timely
requisition. The invasion of eastern Cuba was planned as early as the
first week in May--possibly much earlier than that, and, at any rate,
long before Admiral Cervera's fleet took refuge in Santiago harbor.
Colonel Babcock, Shafter's adjutant-general, told me on May 7 that the
government had decided to send the army of invasion to the eastern end
of the island, and to leave Havana and the western provinces unmolested
until later in the season. Before General Shafter sailed from Tampa,
therefore, he had nearly or quite six weeks in which to acquaint himself
with the Santiago field and mature a plan of operations. The question
whether or not he was furnished with all the means of transportation and
all the supplies for which he made requisition is in more doubt; but,
inasmuch as he seems to have made no complaint or protest, and does not
refer in his official reports to deficiencies of any kind, it may be
assumed, for the purposes of this review, that he had been furnished by
the War Department with everything for which he asked. Upon this
assumption he was unquestionably responsible for the whole Santiago
campaign, and must not only be given credit for the success that crowned
it, but be held accountable for the blunders and oversights by which it
was marred. He can relieve himself from such accountability only by
showing that his equipment was inadequate and that the inadequacy was
the result of causes beyond his control.
We are now prepared to consider:
I. The organization and equipment of the Santiago expedition.
When a general is appointed to lead and direct an expedition in a
foreign country, the first questions, I think, that he must ask himself
are: (1) What is the nature of the field in which I am to operate, and
what are the difficulties--especially the unusual and unfamiliar
difficulties--with which I shall have to contend? (2) Can I disembark my
army in a harbor, or shall I have to land it on an open, unprotected
coast, and perhaps through surf? (3) Are there any roads leading back
into the interior, and, if so, what is their nature, and what is likely
to be their condition at this season of the year? (4) Is the climate of
the country to which I am going an unhealthful one, and, if so, how can
I best protect my men from the diseases likely to attack them?
It is not always practicable to obtain satisfactory answers to such
questions as these; but that answers should be had, if possible, and
that the equipment of the force and the plan of campaign should be made
to accord with the information obtained by means of them, is
unquestionable. In the particular case now under consideration there was
no difficulty whatever in getting full and satisfactory replies, not
only to all of the above questions, but to scores of others of a similar
nature that might have been and ought to have been asked. For nearly a
month before General Shafter sailed from Tampa the vessels of Admiral
Sampson's fleet had been patrolling the southeastern coast of Cuba from
Santiago harbor to Guantanamo Bay, and their officers were in a position
to furnish all the information that might be desired with regard to the
nature of the coast, the facilities for landing an army, the strength
and direction of the prevailing winds, the danger to be apprehended from
heavy surf, and a dozen other matters of vital importance to an invading
army. At Daiquiri, Siboney, and Santiago there were stations of an
American iron-mining company, and its officers and employees, who might
easily have been found, were in a position to furnish any amount of
accurate and trustworthy information with regard to climate, topography,
roads, rains, surf, and local conditions generally, in the very field
that General Shafter's army was to occupy.
The sources of information above indicated were not the only sources
accessible at the time when the Santiago campaign was decided upon; but
they were the most important ones, and it is fair to presume that
General Shafter made use of them to the fullest possible extent. If so,
he was able to answer the questions above suggested in some such way as
this:
1. The field to which I am going is a tropical field, and the unusual
and unfamiliar difficulties with which I shall have to contend are
probably those dependent upon climatic conditions.
2. There are no sheltered harbors on the southeastern coast of Cuba
between Cape Cruz and Cape Maysi except the harbor of Santiago and the
Bay of Guantanamo. The former is in possession of the enemy, and cannot,
therefore, be used, while the latter is too far away from the city of
Santiago, which I am ordered to capture. It is probable, therefore, that
I shall have to land my army on an unsheltered part of the coast. The
prevailing winds in the summer are from the east and southeast, and the
swell that rolls in from the Caribbean Sea often breaks on the exposed
coast-line in heavy and dangerous surf.
3. The roads leading back into the interior in the direction of Santiago
are generally narrow and bad; they traverse almost impenetrable
jungles; and they are liable, at this season of the year, to be rendered
impassable for wheeled vehicles by heavy and frequent rains.
4. The climate is unhealthful, and unless men from the North are well
fed, suitably clothed, securely sheltered, and furnished with boiled
water for drinking purposes, they are almost certain to suffer from
calenture, the characteristic fever of the region, as well as from
yellow fever and dysentery.
This, in the briefest possible summary, is the information that General
Shafter had, or might have had, before he sailed from Tampa. What
preparation did he make to meet the difficulties suggested by this
knowledge, and how far is the influence of it to be traced in the
organization and equipment of his command?
Take, first, the problem of disembarking an army of sixteen thousand
men, with the supplies necessary for its maintenance, on an unsheltered
coast.
In 1847, when General Scott had in contemplation the landing of an army
of twelve thousand men on the open beach at Vera Cruz, he caused
sixty-seven surf-boats to be built for that particular service, each of
them capable of holding from seventy to eighty men. Every detail of the
disembarkation had been carefully considered and planned; every
contingency that could be foreseen had been provided for; and the
landing was successfully made in the course of two or three hours,
without a single error or accident.
When General Shafter sailed from Tampa, on June 14, with an army
considerably larger than that of General Scott, his equipment for
disembarkation on an exposed, surf-beaten coast consisted, according to
his own report, of only two scows! One of these went adrift at sea, and
the loss of it, the general says, "proved to be very serious and was
greatly felt." I don't wonder! Two scows, for an army of sixteen
thousand men and ten or fifteen ship-loads of supplies, was a
sufficiently economical allowance; and when that number was reduced by
half, and a whole army-corps became dependent upon one scow, I am not
surprised to learn that "the disembarkation was delayed and
embarrassed." There is a reference in the report to certain "lighters
sent by the quartermaster's department," and intended, apparently, for
use on the Cuban coast; but when and by what route they were "sent" does
not appear, and inasmuch as they were lost at sea before they came into
General Shafter's control, they can hardly be regarded as a part of his
equipment. All that he had with him was this flotilla of two scows. I
heard vague reports of a pontoon-train stowed away under hundreds of
tons of other stuff in the hold of one of the transports; but whether it
was intended to supplement the flotilla of scows, or to be employed in
the bridging of rivers, I am unable to say. I do not think it was ever
unloaded in Cuba, and I am quite sure that it never was used.
The almost complete absence of landing equipment, in the shape of
surf-boats, lighters, and launches, eventually proved, as I shall
hereafter show, to be disastrous in the extreme; and if the navy had not
come to the rescue, at Daiquiri and Siboney, it is not at all certain
that General Shafter could have landed his army. In a telegram to the
War Department dated "Playa del Este, June 25," he frankly admits this,
and says: "Without them [the navy] I could not have landed in ten days,
and perhaps not at all."
Now, it seems to me that the responsibility for this lack of boats,
which came near ruining the expedition at the outset and which hampered
and embarrassed it for three weeks afterward, can be definitely fixed.
The difficulty to be overcome was one that might have been foreseen and
provided for. If General Shafter did not foresee and provide for it, as
General Scott did at Vera Cruz, he, manifestly, is the person to blame;
while, on the other hand, if he did foresee it, but failed to get from
the War Department the necessary boats, the department is to blame. The
committee of investigation which is holding its sessions at the time
this book goes to press ought to have no trouble in putting the
responsibility for this deficiency where it belongs.
Boats, however, were not the only things that were lacking in the
equipment of General Shafter's army. Next in importance to landing
facilities come facilities for moving supplies of all kinds from the
sea-coast to the front, or, in other words, means of land
transportation. In his official report of the campaign General Shafter
says: "There was no lack of transportation, for at no time, up to the
surrender, could all the wagons I had be used." If I were disposed to be
captious, I should say that the reason why the general could not use the
wagons he had was that a large number of them lay untouched in the holds
of the transports. He might have said, with equal cogency, that there
was no lack of food, because at no time could all the hard bread and
bacon in his ships be eaten. The usefulness of food and wagons is
dependent to some extent upon their location. A superfluity of wagons on
board a steamer, five miles at sea, is not necessarily a proof that
there are more than enough wagons on shore.
When the army began its march in the direction of Santiago, without
suitable tents, without hospital supplies, without camp-kettles, without
hammocks, without extra clothing or spare blankets, and with only a
limited supply of food and ammunition, there were one hundred and
eighteen army wagons still on board the transport _Cherokee_. When they
were unloaded, if ever, I do not know, but they were not available in
the first week of the campaign, when the army began its advance and when
the roads were comparatively dry and in fairly good condition. It must
be observed, moreover, that transportation is not wholly a matter of
wagons. Vehicles of any kind are useless without animals to draw them;
and General Shafter does not anywhere say that he had a superfluity of
mules, or that he could not use all the horses he had. It was in
draft-animals that the weakness of the quartermaster's department became
most apparent as the campaign progressed. There were never half enough
mules to equip an adequate supply-train for an army of sixteen thousand
men, even if that army never went more than ten or twelve miles from its
base. If it had been forced to go fifty miles from its base, the
campaign would have collapsed at the outset.
General Shafter seems disposed to attribute the difficulty that he
experienced in supplying his army with food to the condition of the
roads rather than to the lack of mules, packers, teamsters, and wagons.
In an interview with a correspondent of the Boston "Herald" at Santiago
on August 25 he is reported as saying: "There has been some question
concerning the transportation facilities of the army. The facilities
were all there, and the transportation equipment provided was all that
it should have been; but our difficulties were enormous. There was only
one road; to build another would have taken two years. The nature of the
country, the weather, all these things helped to disorganize this
department. The use of wagons was almost impossible. The pack-train, as
a matter of fact, did the real service. I had not, at first, thought the
pack-train would be of service; but if it had not been there, I do not
know what the army would have done for food. The roads were practically
impassable. With the bridges down, the wagons could not be worked. I had
a great deal of concern when we were only able to get up one day's
rations at a time, but as soon as we were able to get a few days'
rations ahead, we knew we were prepared for anything."
It is hardly accurate to say, without qualification and without
limitation as to time, that the "roads were practically impassable."
They were unquestionably very bad, and perhaps impassable, at the last;
but before they became so there was ample time to take over them, with a
suitable supply-train, all the tents, cooking-utensils, clothing,
medical supplies, and provisions that the army so urgently needed but
did not have. The road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front did not
become impassable for loaded wagons until the end of the second week in
July. For ten days after the army landed it was comparatively dry and
good; and for ten days or two weeks more it was at least passable, and
was constantly traversed, not only by pack-trains, but by wagons with
loads.
Captain Henry L. Marcotte, a retired officer of the Seventeenth
Infantry, who went with General Shafter's army as correspondent for the
"Army and Navy Journal," describes the condition of the road as follows:
"The road from Daiquiri to Siboney, about seven miles, leads over the
foot-hill slopes of the mountain-ranges and crosses a winding stream
several times during that distance. The road-bed, being mostly of rock,
and well shaded by tropical growths, with good water every few hundred
yards, made the journey for the Catling battery a picnic without
obstacles. From Siboney to [a point] near El Pozo the road was as good
as [from Daiquiri] to Siboney, with the exception of one part. This,
with five minutes' work, was made passable for the battery and for the
three army wagons which the quartermaster's department had ventured to
send out. In fact, the road, all the way to Santiago, proved equal to
most country roads, and there was not the slightest excuse for not using
the hundred or more wagons stowed in the hold of the Cherokee to
transport tentage, medical and other supplies close upon the heels of
the slow-moving Fifth Corps.... There is a mystery about the 'condition
of the road' that may remain so unless it is fixed upon as the
scape-goat for the lack of transportation.... The condition of the road
at no time would have prevented a farmer from taking a load of hay to
market.... There was no point from Daiquiri to the trenches which could
not have been as easily reached by wagons as by pack-mules between June
22 and July 18."
Captain Marcotte, as a retired officer of the regular army, is better
qualified than I am to express an opinion with regard to the
availability of a road for military purposes, and he does not hesitate
to say that the road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front was
practicable for loaded wagons up to July 18, or for a period of nearly a
month subsequent to the landing of the army. During a part of that time,
he says, its condition was not such as to prevent a farmer from taking a
load of hay over it.
I myself went over this road from Siboney to the front four times
between June 26 and July 9,--twice on foot, once in an ambulance, and
once in an army wagon,--and my own judgment is that for ten days after
the disembarkation of the army the road was comparatively dry and good.
After that it became muddy and bad, but was by no means impassable, even
for heavily loaded wagons, when I traversed it for the last time, five
days before the surrender of Santiago. With the fall of that city the
army's base of supplies was transferred from Siboney to Santiago harbor,
and the condition of the Siboney road ceased to be a factor in the
transportation problem. When a dozen steamers, loaded with supplies of
all kinds, anchored off the Santiago piers, on July 15, the bulk of the
army was within two miles of them, and there ought to have been no
difficulty in getting to the troops everything that they needed.
If the road from Siboney to the front was practicable for both
pack-mules and wagons from the time when the army landed to the time
when its base of supplies was transferred to Santiago, and if, as
General Shafter asserts, "the facilities were all there, and the
transportation equipment provided was all that it should have been," why
was the army left for almost a month without suitable tents, without
adequate hospital supplies, without camp-kettles, without
cooking-utensils other than tin plates, coffee-cups, and old
tomato-cans, without hammocks, without extra clothing or spare blankets,
and with only a limited supply of food? That this was the state of the
army is beyond question.
Lieutenant John H. Parker of the Gatling-gun battery reported to
Adjutant-General Corbin, under date of July 23, that he and his men had
been entirely without tents for a period of twenty-eight days.
John Henry of the Twenty-first Infantry wrote to his cousin in Lowell,
Massachusetts, that his regiment had been on the firing line seventeen
days. For two days they had nothing at all to eat, and no shelter, and
lay on the ground in puddles of water.
Ex-Representative F. H. Krebs of the Second Massachusetts Regiment says
that for twenty-six consecutive days he had only hard bread, bacon, and
coffee, and that for three days he lived on one hardtack a day. The
soldiers of his regiment did all their cooking in tin plates and
coffee-cups, and slept for two months on the wet ground, under what are
called "shelter"-tents, for the reason, I suppose,--_lucus a non
lucendo_,--that they do not shelter.
Dr. James S. Kennedy, first assistant surgeon of the Second Division
hospital, wrote from the hospital camp near Santiago: "There is an utter
lack of suitable medicines with which to combat disease. There has been
so much diarrhea, dysentery, and fever, and no medicine at all to combat
them, that men have actually died for want of it. Four days after my
reporting here there was not a single medicine in the entire hospital
for the first two diseases, and nothing but quinine for the fever."
Dr. Edward L. Munson reported to Surgeon-General Sternberg, under date
of July 29, that "at the time of the battle of Las Guasimas there were
absolutely no dressings, hospital tentage, or supplies of any kind on
shore, within reach of the surgeons already landed. The medical
department was compelled to rely upon its own energies and improvise its
own transportation. I feel justified in saying that at the time of my
departure [from Siboney] large quantities of medical supplies, urgently
needed on shore, still remained on the transports, a number of which
were under orders to return to the United States. Had the medical
department carried along double the amount of supplies, it is difficult
to see how, with the totally inadequate land and water transportation
provided by the quartermaster's department, the lamentable conditions on
shore could have been in any way improved. The regimental medical
officers had no means of transportation even for their field-chests."
Lieutenant-Colonel Senn, chief of the surgical operating staff, in a
letter to the "Medical Record," dated "Siboney, August 3," disclaimed
responsibility for the want of medical and surgical supplies in the
field-hospitals, and said: "The lack of proper transportation from the
landing to the front cannot be charged to the medical department."
Finally, General Shafter himself, in a telegram to President McKinley,
dated "Santiago, August 8," reported as follows: "At least seventy-five
per cent. of the command have been down with malarial fever, from which
they recover very slowly.... What put my command in its present
condition was the twenty days of the campaign when they had nothing but
meat, bread, and coffee, without change of clothes, and without any
shelter whatever."
In view of the above statements, made, not by irresponsible "newspaper
correspondents and camp-followers," but by the officers and men of the
Fifth Army-Corps, and in view of the confirmation given to them by the
commanding general himself in a telegram to the President, it is proper,
I think, to press once more the question, Why was the army left for
almost a month without suitable tents, without adequate hospital
supplies, without camp-kettles, without cooking-utensils, without
hammocks, without extra clothing or spare blankets, and with only a
limited supply of food? The answer to the question, it seems to me, is
obvious. The army had not half transportation enough to supply its
wants. General Miles discovered this fact when he reached Siboney on
July 11, and he immediately cabled the War Department for more
draft-animals; but it was then too late to make good the deficiency. The
troops were already breaking down, as General Shafter admitted in his
telegram to the President, from "twenty days of meat, bread, and coffee,
without change of clothes, and without any shelter whatever." I do not
know how many draft-animals General Shafter had; but in four journeys
over the road between Siboney and the front I happened to see only two
pack-trains, one of them going forward with ammunition, and the other
returning without load. But whatever may have been the strength of the
pack-train equipment, it was certainly inadequate, and the common
practice of detailing soldiers to march into Siboney after food and
bring it back to the front on their shoulders or on improvised
hand-litters showed the urgency of the need. Many such details or
deputations came on board the _State of Texas_, obtained small
quantities of hospital supplies or delicacies for the sick, and carried
them back to the camps in their hands.
This inadequacy of transportation facilities was apparent to every one
who had any knowledge of the condition of the army, and it was a
subject of common talk in Siboney, in Daiquiri, on board the fleet, and
in every one of our hospitals and camps. I shall try, in another
chapter, to show how it affected the health and fighting efficiency of
the troops, and how near it came to wrecking not only the Fifth
Army-Corps, but the whole Cuban expedition. Suffice it to say, for the
present, that General Shafter sailed from Tampa without a sufficient
number of mules, teamsters, and packers to supply, equip, and maintain
his army in the field. The responsibility for this deficiency, as well
as the responsibility for the lack of boats, must rest either upon the
War Department or upon the general in command. If the latter did not ask
for adequate means of land and water transportation before he left
Tampa, he is the person to be held accountable. If he asked and failed
to obtain, the War Department must stand in the gap.